Preprinted fan folded continuous feed cards have been packaged for over 20 years in cartons that contain 15,000 to 16,000 cards. A typical use for these cards is for insertion into magazines and newspapers as advertisements or order forms. The cartons are currently sent to the application or distribution customer on skids or pallets. Within each carton the cards are packaged in stacks that may be connected in series to an adjacent stack within the same carton. These stacks are handled at the distribution site by an employee of the customer.
The current procedure to feed the preprinted cards into the distribution machine requires a considerable amount of attendance time as well as physical strength. The process requires that the cartons be moved manually from the skids to the floor and placed in line with the distribution machine. The stacks of cards are generally packaged in cartons weighing approximately 60 pounds when filled. In addition, the employee must be constantly available to splice ends of the last card in a stack to a first card in another stack or carton to ensure the continuous feeding of the fan folded cards. This procedure creates additional handling and manning of the process by the application customer; and creates additional manning in labor at the packaging facility.
Recent prior art in the area of handling of fan folded material generally dealt with the handling of continuous fan folded computer paper to and from a printer. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,279,536 discloses a conveyor with spaced apart paper stacking regions for the handling of the computer paper discharged from the printer. This patent is not applicable for the packaging of preprinted fan folded cards for a distribution machine. In the same line, U.S. Pat. No. 4,458,814 discloses a packaging assembly for sheet material utilized to feed printing machines, where the fan folded computer paper is packaged such that the bottom sheets are placed sideways and perpendicularly to the sheet package lie plane. This configuration allows the bottom sheets to be picked up for splicing. This patent provides a means for packaging a series of stacks in a single row, but is not applicable for packaging of hundreds of thousands of cards in multiple rows for feeding in a continuous manner to a delivery distribution site.